


Favour

by sophies_earbuds



Series: Team Foster-Keefe One Shots [1]
Category: Keeper of the Lost Cities Series - Shannon Messenger
Genre: F/M, Sokeefe - Freeform, Tension, but cute, iggy is annoying, in which sophie is sarcastic, it's just sweet, self indulgent, shannon messenger, team foster keefe
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-13
Updated: 2019-08-13
Packaged: 2020-08-20 12:06:46
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,890
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20227576
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sophies_earbuds/pseuds/sophies_earbuds
Summary: Sophie finally cashes in her favour from Keefe.





	Favour

**Author's Note:**

> this is my first sokeefe work published to ao3!!! i am also black_swan_jolie on wattpad, which is where i would usually publish my sokeefe works, but i feel that i've graduated to ao3 a long time ago, and it's time to let the past be the past. 
> 
> i'd like to thank @silveny-dreams for helping me make this one shot as amazing as it can be. 
> 
> and on with the reading!

“How many times have I told you not to let your emotions get out of control?” 

Sophie sighed, turning in her desk chair to face the smirking blond laying on her bed, petting the belly of her smelly imp. Studying sessions tended to go this way: Sophie actually studying, and Keefe claiming he already had it memorised, opting for doing whatever he wanted to do, even though he was always the one who brought up the idea of having a study session in the first place. 

“I’d say a solid three, but I know you like to over-dramatise everything, so go on,” Sophie responded, cocking an eyebrow at him as she crossed her legs at the knee. 

Keefe looked up at her with an amused smile, something more than a smirk, but not genuine enough to show any actual sign of him caring. That seemed to be their recurring problem. “Wow, don’t try so hard to flatter me, Foster.” 

“I’m not trying to do anything,” Sophie claimed, completely ignoring his sarcasm. If she were to be honest, these verbal sparring matches were always her favourite. Even if she would grumble about how annoying it was to have someone argue _everything_ she said, it was nice to always be able to count on having an opposing side to her opinions. That, and it was immensely fun to challenge her brain into new ways of thinking and reasoning. 

“And yet the waves of emotion radiating off of you suggest something else.” Keefe sat up, much to the imp’s dismay, sending him rolling along the bed, squeaking in disgruntlement. 

“My ‘waves of emotion’ are none of your concern.” Sophie upturned her head, refusing to look at the amused boy who was laughing at her, not even trying to hide it. 

“As the Empath, I think I’m the only one who has the authority to claim whether or not they’re my concern. Your refusal to wear your gloves isn’t helping,” Keefe teased, pointing to her bare hands. 

She blushed, remembering their conversation about how her emotions were always too strong. Her enhancing probably didn’t help, seeing as she pretty much radiated power at that point. 

“I don’t like wearing them at home, you know that,” Sophie told him, feeling her previously quippy replies dwindling from her mind. All she was left with was a pathetic excuse, and admittance to defeat this time. It was an unspoken game between them that whoever broke first was the loser. And Sophie had been keeping score. 

“Yeah, I know, I’m just giving you a hard time,” Keefe said with a smirk, signifying that he knew he’d won that time. “And now I’ve distracted you from your work, which happened to be my plan all along.” 

Sophie rolled her eyes, shaking her head in amusement, as she turned back around to face her studies. She’d been stuck with hours of review work from her mentors for her finals, and if she didn’t get at least a quarter of it done that night, she’d have to pile it onto the next night, until it turned into a vicious cycle and started to weigh her down the night before finals. 

She was about to start writing out the instructions of growing a carnissa root when she felt a presence over her shoulder. 

“Wow, this is fascinating,” Keefe deadpanned, looking at her work spread out among the desk. Sophie sighed once again, looking up at the face that lingered over her. 

“Then what do you suggest we do? You know, since you don’t want to do what we planned to do in the first place,” she said, humouring him. Although she wasn’t going to be one to complain, she’d started going a little stir-crazy herself. 

“We could play a game. Do you know how to play bramble?” Keefe asked, sitting back down on Sophie’s large canopied bed as she turned around, officially putting her pencil down for the night. 

“You want to put me in an athletic situation? Ha.” 

“Okay, then what about a different kind of game? We could play truth or dare,” he suggested. 

Sophie could only look at him with that kind of look that said “wow, you’re actually serious?” 

“Yeah, no, that’s a bad idea, you’re right.”

Sophie thought for a moment, her brain foggy from all of the studying. It was still light outside, but the sun was only going to start setting in a matter of thirty minutes, so that took any outdoor game out of the running. 

“What do you usually do when you hang out with Dex or Biana?” Keefe asked, sitting criss-crossed, coaxing Iggy into his lap. The imp looked like he hadn’t forgotten what happened before, but still dragged his bloated, pink, furry self onto his knee, headbutting Keefe’s hand until he started scratching the top of Iggy’s head, so that he wouldn’t mercilessly punish anyone within smelling distance. 

“Normally we just talk about Black Swan stuff, but there’s no Black Swan stuff to talk about anymore,” Sophie started, thinking back to times she’d hung out with her friends without having any sort of drama. “And Biana usually just uses the time to convince me to let her give me a makeover, and when that doesn’t happen, we just sit around and talk about people at school.”

“Man, you’re really bad at having friends,” Keefe laughed, though he faltered under Sophie’s death glare. “What did you do when you had to hang out with humans?”

Sophie thought back to her time in San Diego, trying to recall a moment where she’d had to hang out with someone for any extended period of time. But her brain either didn’t want to remember, or there wasn’t anything to remember in the first place, because nothing popped up. 

“You’re one of the first friends I’ve ever had, Keefe. I never hung out with humans,” she reminded him. 

Keefe looked up from petting Iggy, sighing in thought. “What about your sister, then? What did she do with her friends?” 

“They’d do human things. We don’t have TV or video games here, and that’s pretty much all I can think of,” Sophie dismissed the ideas, not knowing too much about the social aspects of being a human. The closest she’d ever gotten to hanging out with a group of humans was when her parents made her chaperone one of Amy’s elementary school dances. She’d been ten years old at the time, standing in the corner of the smelly gym drinking punch and trying to distract herself from the too-loud thoughts of three-hundred children. 

“Your best friend is a technopath, and yet you haven’t taken advantage of that?” Keefe asked, his laugh sounding more like a scoff as he gently cupped the imp into his hands, standing up and placing him in his cage. He crossed her bedroom to inspect the volumes of books on her floor to ceiling shelves, though Sophie had already looked through every single item there, and nothing was interesting. 

“He’s busy working on important stuff, I’m not going to occupy his time by asking him to make me random human things,” Sophie defended, standing up to follow, not really knowing what they were looking for. 

“We could go to the Forbidden Cities and watch a movie. They have, like, theatres, right?” Keefe asked, carding through her books absentmindedly. 

“Must I remind you that that’s illegal?” Sophie asked, raising an eyebrow at him. 

“Once again, you’re not taking full advantage of your technopathic friend,” Keefe complained, reaching up to ruffle the top of Sophie’s hair before smiling sheepishly. She pouted at him, trying to smooth out the new tangles, and eventually just giving up when Keefe started snickering. 

“Okay, that was mean, don’t retaliate,” Keefe admitted, his hands held up in surrender. He reached back up to Sophie’s head, staring at his hands as his tongue poked out of the corner of his mouth. Sophie looked up at him, but he was so concentrated on what he was doing that his gaze never wavered. He seemed like a drill sergeant standing for attention. It was weird to see him in such a mesmerised state as he started to realise that he was fixing her hair. 

Sophie blushed as she became hyper aware of Keefe’s fingers carding through her hair, and she reached up to take Keefe’s hands away from their project, finally breaking his concentration. 

She walked away, letting go of Keefe’s hands as she started to pace slowly toward her bed, trying to untangle her hair herself. “Face it, there’s nothing for us to do but read boring history books and lay here bored,” she complained, plopping herself down on her bed, looking up at her canopy with her legs dangling over the edge of her mattress. 

“Come on, there’s gotta be something we can do. Fitz and I have been friends since level one, and he’s _unbearably_ boring. If I can handle a friendship with him, then I can certainly think of something for us to do.” 

Keefe laid down next to her, and Sophie felt the mattress dip ever so slightly. Soon enough, she saw Keefe’s face appear next to hers. 

“Oh, I know. I have a question,” Keefe said, turning his head to face Sophie. When she looked at him, she felt her heart pull in a way that reminded her of missing a step on the stairs, with the adrenaline of jumping off of a cliff.She ignored the pull, and instead of looking directly into his ice blue eyes -which seemed like a tremendously bad idea-, she chose to look at his nose. Upon doing so, she noticed the little freckles he had on his nose, and began drawing pictures in her mind as if they were stars forming constellations-

That was an even worse idea than the eye contact. She stopped herself quickly before he could notice she wasn’t paying attention. 

“Have you decided what my favour to you should be? Because I don’t want you holding that over my head until we’re five thousand years old,” he asked, taking on a much more serious tone than their previous conversation. 

Sophie had to think for a moment. She hadn’t really decided on one single favour, seeing as nothing really came up, and Keefe would usually offer to do things before she had to ask. But the adrenaline pull in her heart took control of her mouth before she could stop it. 

“Yeah, I think I have,” she mused, her eyes flickering up to his, biting her lip and focusing too hard on her pulse, and the burning on her ears. 

“Oh yeah?” Keefe asked, raising his eyebrows. His face may have stayed the same, but his eyes flared with hesitation. 

“I… want to know how you really feel about me.” 

The silence that followed was deafening for Sophie. Did she overstep a boundary? Read too much into things? Maybe he’d only wanted her to ask him to do something for her, like finish her homework for a week or take over her chores with the animals. 

“What?” he asked, his eyebrows scrunching up in confusion. Sophie’s cheeks started to burn, and she could hear her racing pulse as the blood rushed up to her head. 

“I mean, _you_ get to know how _I’m_ feeling all the time. But it’s kinda hard to tell how _you_ feel about things. So I want to know how you honestly feel about me,” she said, feeling slightly bold. They hung out alone often, but for some reason, she felt just that much more comfortable that day than she had before. 

“I...guess that’s fair. But just so you know, I’m not going to hold back,” he told her, his gaze so intense that she thought he might bore holes into her forehead. She had to look away to be able to think straight. 

She couldn’t speak at that point, and only nodded to tell him to go on. 

“I think that you’re the strongest person I know, and you’re crazy beautiful,” he started, turning onto his side to face her and reaching a hand out to touch her cheek with his thumb, “with just the right amount of crazy to want to keep being around me.” 

She couldn’t hide her blush at his compliments, or her growing smile at how he seemed to soften from talking about her, still brushing his thumb over her burning cheeks. 

“And don’t get me started on how smart and awesome you are, or we’ll be here for hours.”

Sophie didn’t know what to say to that. His words sounded so soft and sincere, and his eyes just kept flicking around her face, like they were trying to find the best place to look, and couldn’t decide. 

“Is that all you wanted as a favour?” he asked, a small smile finding his lips as his gaze remained unwavered. His thumb traced down her cheek and landed on her chin, holding her face delicately like it was a fragile piece of art. 

Sophie had trouble finding her words, and she bit her lip before she responded. “You put me on the spot, I didn’t have time to think of anything better,” she whispered, unable to make her vocal cords work completely. She felt like she was out of air, and Keefe’s touch must have started to turn her brain into putty, because she was starting to like that tripping feeling in her chest. 

“No, I think that’s a pretty good question, but that doesn’t count as a favour. You could ask me that any old day,” Keefe told her, sounding amused. And while that should have been good news, Sophie couldn’t help but groan. 

“You just won’t let me get this out from over our heads, will you?” she asked with an amused smile, shaking her head in slight amazement. Keefe laughed, letting go of her face and turning dramatically to lay on his back again. 

“Where’s the fun in that?” he teased, and Sophie couldn’t help but let out a disbelieving chuckle. “I’ll tell you what, to make it even, I get to ask you a question you have to answer,” he wagered. 

“This seems like the exact opposite of a favour. Now I’m giving you something.”

“That’s what some people consider a conversation,” Keefe said pointedly, nothing but humour in his tone. 

“Fine. Whatever you ask, I will answer,” Sophie agreed, too caught up in the moment to even think to take another second to consider. Whether she liked it or not, there was something about Keefe that made her brain malfunction and her legs turn to jello. She was lucky they were laying down. 

Her mind flashed back to the moment when Keefe had practically pinned her to her wall, whispering in her ear so softly, so close that she could feel his breath on her cheek, rendering her breathless as her knees started feeling weak, her stomach filling with butterflies. Suddenly, she wanted that feeling back. 

Keefe grabbed her hand, twining their fingers together agonizingly slowly, making her heart pound in her ears even louder than before. She was oddly nervous about what Keefe might ask, even though she always had to answer personal questions with Fitz during cognate training. But it was different with Keefe. She couldn’t explain how or why, but it was. 

And without any warning, Keefe asked, “Will I ever have a shot at being with you?” 

Sophie pulled away slowly, sitting up and staring at her shoes, tucking her hair behind her ear nervously as she tried to make her brain process what Keefe just asked her. Did he just… confess to her?

“Hey, if I overstepped, I’m-”

“No, you didn’t,” Sophie said, reaching up to pluck out one of her eyelashes. “I just need a moment to actually understand what you’re saying.” She took a deep breath as she reached back to take Keefe’s hand again, letting him know she didn’t want him to go. 

“I didn’t mean to spring that on you, it was the heat of the moment, I’m-”

Sophie whipped her head around to look at him. “If you say you’re sorry, I will punch you in the shoulder. Hard,” she said, trying to offer her best scowl, even though she probably came off looking more like an angry kitten. “Why didn’t you tell me this earlier? I gave you the most perfect opportunity anyone could ever have.”

Keefe looked like a deer caught in headlights as he reached a hand up to rub at the back of his neck. “I chickened out,” he said, staring at his lap. 

Sophie narrowed her eyes, tilting her head as realisation dawned on her. 

“Oh.” 

Keefe slowly looked up at her from under his eyelashes, and smiled softly. “If you need time, I can go. You can take as long as you want,” he said. “I’ll wait for you.”

Sophie took another deep breath. “You won’t have to.” 

Parroting her, he asked “Oh?” 

“As long as you’re sure we’re ready for it. If you’re sure that this thing,” she gestured between the two of them, “between us, whatever it is, is ready for… something more, then no. You won’t have to wait.” She chanced a look up at his eyes, wanting to see _him_, to see the sincerity as he answered her. 

“Why am I the one who has to decide that?” he asked. 

“Aren’t you always saying ‘trust the Empath’?” 

Keefe offered a small smile, nodding. Then he closed his eyes, breathing in deeply through his nose, and the brightest smile adorned his face as he exhaled. His grip on her hand tightened, and she figured out that he was reading her enhanced emotions, emotions she wasn’t even aware of because he’d never told her what they were. Though was starting to think that maybe they weren’t so subconscious anymore. 

“I think we’re ready to at least give it a try. And I’m not just saying that because I’ve been waiting for this for four years,” he told her with a fond smile, redness tinting his cheeks and ears. Sophie noticed that his freckles were even more prominent when he was blushing, and she decided she liked him like that. Real, personal, and honest. 

“Four years? Really? Even when I was the weird human girl?” she had to ask.

Keefe grabbed her other hand, pulling her so close that their foreheads almost touched, and almost as if she’d been blasted with a gust of wind, the feeling was back in her chest. The jolting feeling of missing a step on the stairs, and the exhilaration of feeling two feet back on the ground. The weakening of the knees, the tingling in the tips of her fingers, and the awareness to everything going on. 

She could feel Keefe’s breath against her cheek as he leaned in and whispered, “from the first moment I met you. How could someone not fall for the mysterious blonde girl on her way to the Healing Center?”

Sophie tried to repress the smile that spread quickly on her face by biting her lip, but even that didn’t work as Keefe leaned up to kiss her forehead softly, making her cheeks flush unbearably hot. 

“I guess this was a long time coming, then, huh?” she asked sheepishly, not wanting to pull away as their foreheads touched, but still being so flustered that she needed to take a breath. 

“I’ve waited for this for awhile,” Keefe said, trailing his hands up her arm to hold onto her shoulders, sending chills down her spine and a small laugh to her lips, which she was way too self-conscious about in the close proximity. 

“So you’ve been counting on the fact that I’d someday succumb to your charm?” 

“You admit that I’m charming, then?” 

Sophie could only roll her eyes and pushed him away, laughing. And while she felt a little awkward, she didn’t feel uncomfortable or embarrassed. 

“Can you put your ego somewhere else and let this be a happy moment?”

“Not when you just admitted that you think I’m charming,” Keefe joked, smirking while giving her a look that suggested that she was never going to live that down. His eyebrows danced mischievously in a way that made Sophie’s cheeks even warmer. 

“Fine, then I take it back. You’re a smelly boy who doesn’t deserve to sit on my very clean bed,” Sophie stated in mock seriousness, crossing her arms and offering only a half smile. 

Keefe gaped with an inkling of a smirk tugging at his top lip, like it was naturally there. He exhaled a small scoff, catching her eyes quickly as he leaned in again. 

“I smell like peppermint, and I know that for a fact because that’s what’s in my shampoo _and_ cologne,” he defended, staring at Sophie pointedly. She almost forgot that they had just been having a serious moment in the midst of all of the joking. But this boy in front of her, who did actually smell pleasantly of peppermint, had just confessed to having a crush on her for four years. 

“Well, maybe I don’t like peppermint,” she lied, keeping her hands just out of Keefe’s reach so he couldn’t read into her enhanced emotions. 

“That’s _definitely_ not true, because you said that peppermint reminds you of Christmas, and made us all drink peppermint hot chocolate last year,” Keefe shot back, tilting his head in triumph. 

“Fine, you smell very nice. Is that what you wanted?” Sophie asked sarcastically, giving into his stubbornness. 

“It’ll do for now,” he said with a wicked grin, standing up to walk away. She finally took a deep breath, closing her eyes as she felt her lungs fill with cool air after all of that pressure. What previously felt like unbearing heat now felt like icy cold water splashed in her face as she watched Keefe walk away, trying to process that that was the boy she could now say she was dating. 

Keefe headed over to the bookshelf Sophie displayed his framed paintings on, along with her ipod and scrapbook. It was the one little safe nook in Sophie’s bedroom with any sort of personalisation. She should’ve collected more personal things at that point, but she’d been so busy with trying not to die every other week that there hadn’t really been much thought about it. 

Sophie stood up to follow him once again, watching as he fingered through every item on the bookshelf like he had with the other. Reading titles on the spines of dusty books, leaving a trail of clean where his finger dragged across the volumes. But when he reached the paintings, all he did was stare with a small smile on his face. 

When Sophie stopped to stand behind him, she asked “what do you mean ‘for now’?”

He turned to face her, his expression not changing when he met her eyes, and reached out his hand for Sophie to take “Stick with me and we’ll find out together.”

Their fingers connected gingerly, and Sophie couldn’t help but match Keefe’s smile as her knees felt weak. Whether it was from the enhancing, or something much more magical, she didn’t know. 

“Yeah. Together,” she echoed, knowing that her eyes conveyed to him every word her mouth didn’t.


End file.
